A retirement crisis is looming. As people live longer, one study finds that half of all households are at risk of coming up short on retirement money. And while many working households may feel they simply don’t have enough to spare for retirement, experts say some of the biggest barriers to saving up are psychological.
Listen to the full story at National Public Radio.
Your mind may be the closest thing to the Holy Grail of longevity and happiness. Education has been widely documented by researchers as the single variable tied most directly to improved health and longevity. And when people are intensely engaged in doing and learning new things, their well-being and happiness can blossom.
Read the full article at U.S. News and World Report
More than 40 million women are the primary caregivers for a sick person, very often the man they are married to. Caregiving, after all, is a wife’s expected role, and most accept it perforce as a duty that offers precious time to express love and wishes, settle financial and legal matters, and right past wrongs.
Read the full article at The New York Times
Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Md., opened one of the first geriatric emergency departments, which it calls a seniors emergency center, in 2008, and its parent organization, Trinity Health System, runs 12 nationwide, primarily in the Midwest, and plans to open six or seven more by June, a spokeswoman said.
Read the full article at The New York Times
President Barack Obama and Democrats are counting on regaining support from older voters who switched to the GOP in 2008 and 2010 by attacking Republican plans to revamp Medicare. But Mitt Romney is proving to be a formidable competitor in this battle.
Read the full article at The Wall Street Journal
Within five years, for the first time in history, the number of adults 65 and older will exceed the number of children younger than 5, the World Health Organization reports. By mid-century, this demographic will outnumber children younger than 14, and more than 2 billion of the people on Earth will be 60 or older.
Read the full article at The Washington Post
When I suggested to my parents that they might want to get their hearing tested, their first reaction (after exasperated sighs) was that they didn’t want to be bothered. Turns out, they’ve got a lot of company.
Of the 26.7 million people over age 50 with a hearing impairment, only one in seven, a meager 14 percent, use a hearing aid, said Dr. Frank Lin, assistant professor of otolaryngology and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University. “If you think you have a hearing loss, you probably do,” he said.
Read the full article at The New York Times
Americans are living longer, but the gains in life span are accruing disproportionately among the better educated, according to a new report by researchers from the University of Wisconsin.
Read the full article at The New York Times
The burden of paying for college is wreaking havoc on the finances of an unexpected demographic: senior citizens.
New research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that Americans 60 and older still owe about $36 billion in student loans, providing a rare window into the dynamics of student debt. More than 10 percent of those loans are delinquent. As a result, consumer advocates say, it is not uncommon for Social Security checks to be garnished or for debt collectors to harass borrowers in their 80s over student loans that are decades old.
Read the full article at The Washington Post
Scott Kirschenbaum’s new film, “You’re Looking at Me Like I Live Here and I Don’t,” was supposed to be scripted and cast — a coherent story with a beginning, a middle and an end. Then he found his unlikely star: Lee Gorewitz, 78, who lives in dementia unit at Reutlinger Community for Jewish Living in Danville, California.
Read the full article in The New York Times